I do not think any form of "redefining masculinity" is ever going to work out the way people seem to think it is. Dont try to analyze demographics from an objective distance, just try to...
Exemplary
I do not think any form of "redefining masculinity" is ever going to work out the way people seem to think it is.
Dont try to analyze demographics from an objective distance, just try to empathize. Think back to when you were a teenager. Did you enjoy it when your parents would nag you and tell you all the things you are doing wrong with your life? Even if it was good advice? I never did. My brother never did. None of my peers did.
Now imagine, would you like it more if instead of your parents who feed and clothe and maybe even love you, it was some random stranger who doesnt even know you?
Young men do not want some random woman on the internet defining masculinity for them, because it is a form of control. It takes away their agency to have an outsider define their goals for them. Its like when people turn away from Christianity because they are sick of old people juding them, so they go in the opposite direction and become goth or something like that. They know you dont like it, thats part of what made it appealing in the first place.
Similarly, if youve got a culture thats focused on stuff like feminism telling young men that they need to change themselves because who they currently are is not good enough, they will run in the opposite direction. Declaring a "crisis of masculinity" because of people like Andrew Tate will backfire. It will only serve to make the man seem cooler than he already did to them.
As a new father, this entire social quandary has me really nervous about my son’s future. I want to be a good role model for him, but I fear that he’ll get swept up in the noise. With that in...
As a new father, this entire social quandary has me really nervous about my son’s future. I want to be a good role model for him, but I fear that he’ll get swept up in the noise. With that in mind, I agree largely with your statement, because I feel like saying “xyz is bad” without providing an alternative to xyz is a recipe for failure. We ought to instead be focused on finding, and standing up, proper examples of male role models.
As a (former) teacher, I had it drilled into me that positive reinforcement is much more effective than its negative foil (taking away a good thing). Even if we don’t think folks like Andrew Tate are “good things,” to young men, if all we do is say that these people are bad examples, and try to take them away, it solves nothing. Back to the teacher lens, we were told to “catch kids being good” and praise them for that. Reinforcing the positive instead of reacting to negative. In that same vein, we should be standing up these positive models and doing our best to drive kids towards them, not away from someone else.
What I’ve seen is that being a good role model coupled with some guiding towards/away from certain media is a good recipe for success. I actually rarely felt resentment when my parents said I...
What I’ve seen is that being a good role model coupled with some guiding towards/away from certain media is a good recipe for success.
I actually rarely felt resentment when my parents said I shouldn’t do something. I mostly trusted their judgement (although they were definitely wrong about violent video games - I played those anyway). Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s that they weren’t ever hypocritical. There was never a “do as I say, not as I do” moment growing up.
That's a good description of my preferred approach. I'll add that as a parent of four, I also strive to allow for a safe space for failure. First, I think children will often learn better if...
That's a good description of my preferred approach. I'll add that as a parent of four, I also strive to allow for a safe space for failure.
First, I think children will often learn better if they're allowed to make their own choices and see the consequences. And second, I think it's important for them see that sometimes despite your best effort at something you'll still fail, and to learn how to handle that gracefully. (Note that I'd never sabotage them to teach them this! And of course I'll intervene if there's the the possibility of lasting harm or consequences.)
So metaphorically speaking, I'll allow the odd minor scraped knee now and then. But I'll be right there ready with the neosporin and a band-aid.
And since I'm fond of digging into my file of literary quotations:
To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students instruct themselves calls for even greater energy. To see someone fall (which will teach him not to fall again) when a word from you would keep him on his feet but ignorant of an important danger, is one of the tasks of the teacher that calls for special energy, because holding in is more demanding than crying out.
That sounds really wonderful, to have trustworthy parents provide meaningful judgement I had the opposite type of parents, and from the age of 12 I firmly believed they know nothing and I...
That sounds really wonderful, to have trustworthy parents provide meaningful judgement
I had the opposite type of parents, and from the age of 12 I firmly believed they know nothing and I shouldn't trust their judgement on anything at all. Everything they did weren't hypocritical, but were steeped in irrational anxieties that all come down to "it just doesn't feel right".
Part of being a good role model is taking care of one's own mental health, and accepting that we live in an imperfect world.
You make some great points, and it’s worth calling out that I feel much the same about my parents. They weren’t super strict, and they weren’t perfect by any means, but we got along, and I...
You make some great points, and it’s worth calling out that I feel much the same about my parents. They weren’t super strict, and they weren’t perfect by any means, but we got along, and I respected their judgments, so in the rare moments where they did truly course-correct, I almost always listened to them.
I do feel like I’m doing a good job so far, and at the end of the day, I know that I will always be there for the little guy. So, I am confident he will have at least one really good male role model in his life. He also thankfully has great grandparents, uncles, etc, but I’m just trying to build myself up with a little self-love here. :)
Is there an example you can give of where you disagreed and trusted their judgement? Based on that small snippet, it sounds as though you're like-minded and where you disagreed, you ignored them....
Is there an example you can give of where you disagreed and trusted their judgement?
Based on that small snippet, it sounds as though you're like-minded and where you disagreed, you ignored them. One might extrapolate that had you disagreed on "role models" like and Andrew tate, you'd have ignored them?
No criticism, just curiosity (and I totally agree on violent video games).
By this I meant we may have just been lucky to have similar strong sensibilities derived from our genetics. I definitely complained and disagreed plenty as a younger child. But the values I...
Maybe it’s genetic
By this I meant we may have just been lucky to have similar strong sensibilities derived from our genetics. I definitely complained and disagreed plenty as a younger child. But the values I learned were basically "don't hurt others" and "take care of your surroundings". Hard to disagree with that.
Honestly my experience was probably largely from their tolerance of my own decision making. There won’t be as much conflict if the parents never start it. Like I could have been told to clean my room more but I wasn’t and I didn’t. These days I’m reasonably cleaner than average. More tidy than my parents keep their place.
Edit: As a better supporting anecdote than cleaning my room, when I told my mom I was definitely an atheist she wasn’t upset. She asked if I felt wonder when viewing the world. I said I did so she said “you’re good”.
If you model honoring your and others emotions and needs (primarily but demonstrating them for yourself to your son, and radiating outwards to everyone else, including him), he will be far better...
If you model honoring your and others emotions and needs (primarily but demonstrating them for yourself to your son, and radiating outwards to everyone else, including him), he will be far better off than everyone else people-pleasing and not understanding how to do right by themselves.
Do a rabbit hole search today looking at things like boundaries, boundary areas, core values/principles, emotional inteligence and also emotional immaturity.
Understand that when we feel reactive and intensly in response to various situations, others, places, and time etc there is often a violation or an inadequacy in terms of needs being fulfilled and boundaries existing or being properly enforced to ensure safety and equilibrium. When you feel something or someone else feels something like this, try to understand what led to that state and what it might say about their needs being met or their values being upheld that the current situation interferes with and work to develop practical boundaries that reasonably address the areas and values that are implicated
This stuff will blow your mind when you start being able to not unsee it playing out day to day in many of life's personal and others personal situations
One of the things that I hope to see in future elections is a reversal of the shift rightward by young American men. There's some reason for hope here; they appear to not hold entrenched party...
One of the things that I hope to see in future elections is a reversal of the shift rightward by young American men. There's some reason for hope here; they appear to not hold entrenched party affiliation and instead are very issues driven. This suggests that the correct policies may entice them to switch back. I had a couple takeaways from this article and the study it references. First, men and women are extraordinarily similar in their opinions about themselves and about men in some very key topics. Second, men's issues are not inherently unsolvable. Third, men do not necessarily want women to fail, but they are struggling to grasp how to reconcile their beliefs with reality.
One of the most throughline findings that we have, both in the U.S. and internationally, is how much men want to be caregivers. There are some men who don’t want to be in that role, and by the way, that’s the same for women. Not all women want to be mothers, but for the most part, when we speak to fathers, they’re like, “I really want to be there for my child. I really want to have a relationship with my child.”
So, we asked, “What are the biggest challenges right now around being a father in the U.S. today?” That’s where we heard about “the wallet dad” and essentially this idea that men are feeling this kind pressure to be a provider, so economic precarity for fathers is a big challenge. It’s this sense of, like, “What am I supposed to do if I can’t provide for my child?” And those dads who were economically stable felt a sense of loss, like, “All I did was work. All I did was be a provider. I didn’t really spend time with my child and see their experiences.”
86% of men surveyed "chose 'provider' as the top trait they should have". That's depressing. Equally depressing is that 77% of women responded the same. Combined with a weak economy and the rise of social media comparisons, this is a recipe for disaster.
What is the answer here? I think we can approach it from both sides. Create policies that help men be more financially stable. Stop making men feel like they need to be providers-first.
You might be interested in this video from More Perfect Union that featured a discussion from a fairly diverse group of men about the recent rightward shift. It's got a clickbaity title, but it...
You might be interested in this video from More Perfect Union that featured a discussion from a fairly diverse group of men about the recent rightward shift. It's got a clickbaity title, but it tackled some of the issues covered in this article as well.
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed that video a lot. I liked their ability to have a good discussion despite the differences in political leanings. Video had me engaged the whole time. I had started...
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed that video a lot. I liked their ability to have a good discussion despite the differences in political leanings. Video had me engaged the whole time. I had started reading Of Boys and Men and this was a good reminder to pick that up again. Some thoughts I had:
One of the Republican voters was very careful to state that if he had to state which gender had it harder finding a job today, he would state that everyone's getting screwed but that maybe 50.01% of the hardship goes to men. That speaks to a desire to be aware that women have hardships too.
The more liberal of the men were all united in their judgement of the Democratic Party's platform around men. The least critical they got was in the vein of "Democrats are wrong for ____, but Republicans are so much worse". I mean, good on them for recognizing that for sure, but there's something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party if a large chunk of their voters are only voting because the other party is more evil.
The phrase toxic masculinity has clearly outgrown its original use of the phrase and may be doing more harm than good now. Rather than using it to describe a phenomenon for study, it seems that it's being used to attack (as perceived by these men), which is counterproductive if trying to solve it. As Reeves says, you're not going to convince many people to change their behavior if you are telling them that they have a personal failing. i.e. Tell people how to be good rather than telling them that they are bad.
There's way, way more similarities than differences.
Thanks again, @AnthonyB. I can feel I'll be thinking about this for a while.
I mean I'm glad people are realizing it, but this happened about 3 days after it started to be widely used in the media and online discourse. And optimistically at the latest when the most famous...
The phrase toxic masculinity has clearly outgrown its original use of the phrase
I mean I'm glad people are realizing it, but this happened about 3 days after it started to be widely used in the media and online discourse. And optimistically at the latest when the most famous corporate use happened and was mocked, which was the beginning of 2019.
And I'm not saying that toxic masculinity doesn't exist or anything of the sort, but terms like "toxic masculinity" or the phrase "check your privilege", no matter their original purpose, feel like they're tailor made to be immediately hijacked by angry or shallow people on both fringes and used primarily to polarize society.
I used to agree, but then I saw the right demonize, muddy the waters and redefine "woke" in real time. At this point, I feel like trying to blame terminology is a red herring, trying to attach a...
I used to agree, but then I saw the right demonize, muddy the waters and redefine "woke" in real time.
At this point, I feel like trying to blame terminology is a red herring, trying to attach a rational reason for backlash to a concept that would've been demonized no matter what it was called.
Two counterpoints to this. First is that the reaction doesn't need to be rational to be relevant. We should care about the influence on society of this kind of discourse that often uses things...
Two counterpoints to this. First is that the reaction doesn't need to be rational to be relevant. We should care about the influence on society of this kind of discourse that often uses things like toxic masculinity as more of a purity test than anything. Imo it's very possible that despite good intentions the net result on society has been negative, which would be stupid, but if it's real then it doesn't make sense to continue.
Second is a bit of a devil's advocate, but it's genuine. Look at it from the perspective of someone who's really annoyed by this discourse. It's been happening for at least a decade now and throughout all that time he's been told he should shut up because he's privileged and a part of the problem. This surely is not what the people who came up with the term toxic masculinity meant to say, but unfortunately is something that's still often being said in the dumber social media circles as a response to any disagreement.
In that situation of course you get more angry and more dismissive over time. And I think I really should emphasize: this has been happening for over a decade. I'm not excusing the result, but a slightly assholish interpretation of what you say would be "we did the thing that antagonizes a nontrivial group of the population for ten years straight and now the group is so radical that we can write them off as evil and a lost cause". Whatever the real cause of the issue is (and I don't think this is the major part), that approach doesn't make it better.
Correlation is not causality. People are not becoming radicalized because they were treated dismissively by the opposition. People are becoming radicalized because capitalism is falling apart at...
Correlation is not causality.
People are not becoming radicalized because they were treated dismissively by the opposition. People are becoming radicalized because capitalism is falling apart at the seams and the vast majority of people in our country have been having a really rough go of things in the past few decades.
It's a lot easier to spread a message that scapegoats an outgroup by making a mountain out of a series of microaggressions than one that redirects that rage at the sorts of people who are responsible for our current circumstances.
Of course the ultimate source of these trends is material, but boiling it down so much really isn't explanatory in this conversation. It erases the clear cultural divisions and does not predict...
Of course the ultimate source of these trends is material, but boiling it down so much really isn't explanatory in this conversation. It erases the clear cultural divisions and does not predict the specific orientation of reaction. This reasoning also implies that every person who's voiced criticism of the meme is doing so in bad faith or was misled for conspiratorial purposes.
In some sense the specifically antifeminist backlash is being generated by propaganda taking advantage of hardships, but when the vast majority of men have no real motivation to engage with the bases of sociological theories and many of those men make explicit their mistaken impressions of feminist language, refusing to reorient language on the fly in the face of those propagandists is saying that you're done fighting. It sucks having words twisted, and there's no perfect phrasing, but the inevitable disjunction between theories of demographic analysis and practical communication is not handwavable, not when the problematic demographic in practice is voting against things theirselves proclaim to believe.
When someone's only idea of feminist concepts is filtered through the lens of the propagandist, there is no winning move. Conceding to them their ability to direct the narrative through policing...
the inevitable disjunction between theories of demographic analysis and practical communication is not handwavable
When someone's only idea of feminist concepts is filtered through the lens of the propagandist, there is no winning move.
Conceding to them their ability to direct the narrative through policing use of language seems like something that is tailor-made to cause confusion and waste time, while gaining very little in return - as they can simply repeat the same process with the new language.
If there's any further fighting to be done, it's certainly not on the propagandist's terms.
My issue is your disregard of the obscurity as simply the propagandists' narrative. Most people were not introduced to it through coherent framing, and plenty of people who knew the precise...
My issue is your disregard of the obscurity as simply the propagandists' narrative. Most people were not introduced to it through coherent framing, and plenty of people who knew the precise definition happily threw it around as a signifier of masculine individuals doing wrong, regardless of the context's connection to the perverse expectations of manhood.
But also, too bad? They're gonna keep lying. Refusing to adapt is just pride. They're words. "Toxic masculinity" is not so precise a concept as to require technical grounding.
Edit: Apologies if this seemed curt, but your response really disregarded everything I wrote and just parroted the standard cliche response. That has been the logic of progressive messaging for 10-15 years, and it is not working, so forgive me for being skeptical about staying the course.
I see the problem differently. Progressive messaging has had issues for the past 10-15 years, but to me, the problem is not based on language, but giving opposition-controlled social spaces too...
That has been the logic of progressive messaging for 10-15 years, and it is not working, so forgive me for being skeptical about staying the course.
I see the problem differently. Progressive messaging has had issues for the past 10-15 years, but to me, the problem is not based on language, but giving opposition-controlled social spaces too much grace and being too eager to assume good faith where there is none to be found.
Putting a new wrapper on the same underlying idea isn't going to work if it's communicated in the same way through the same flawed sites. Instead it's just setting someone up to have a gigantic "SUCKER" stamped on their forehead, leaving them with the distinct feeling that they wasted a lot of time and energy to accomplish nothing.
When the deck is stacked against you, you're not going to win hearts and minds by going high when your opposition goes low. You either change how you communicate in a way that is unaccounted for, or you pick a different battleground, one where you can actually connect with real human beings and know that you're changing lives. De-radicalization is a tough job, and I'm thankful for the men in my life who were willing to listen.
Apologies if this seemed curt
Don't worry about it even a little bit, you're fine. :)
My experience would tell me that the attitude of assuming bad faith in such spaces has backfired and spilled into the wider culture. Instead, feminists of any gender seem to have given up on...
My experience would tell me that the attitude of assuming bad faith in such spaces has backfired and spilled into the wider culture. Instead, feminists of any gender seem to have given up on meaningfully communicating with men steeped in patriarchy who aren't dedicated to learning.
That could all be selection bias, of course. But I don't think it's "going high" to rephrase things, just kind of the bare minimum. Social media may be biased and inculcate rage, that doesn't mean that billions of people don't treat it as otherwise.
I find this quite funny because if you presented the above response to me without context, I would 100% assume it was said by a right winger criticizing the left. I've seen similar rhetoric many...
Conceding to them their ability to direct the narrative through policing use of language seems like something that is tailor-made to cause confusion and waste time, while gaining very little in return - as they can simply repeat the same process with the new language.
If there's any further fighting to be done, it's certainly not on the propagandist's terms.
I find this quite funny because if you presented the above response to me without context, I would 100% assume it was said by a right winger criticizing the left. I've seen similar rhetoric many times. And considering that the left really does use language policing as a tool to try to change society but also seemingly more often as a purity test*, I don't think they all were necessarily right wing extremists.
* see unhoused vs homeless, CSAM vs child porn, pushing back on some slurs like retarded etc.
Perhaps that's not the right word (non-native speaker), but I have seen all three used as signals that one is a part of "the right group" or assumptions being made about bad intentions of the...
Perhaps that's not the right word (non-native speaker), but I have seen all three used as signals that one is a part of "the right group" or assumptions being made about bad intentions of the other party based on them using the old terms or actively refusing the new ones.
I just don't see "pushing back on slurs" in that light. Nor using intentional language. People can be assholes about a lot of things, but doing it in some sort of "I'm more pure than you" light is...
I just don't see "pushing back on slurs" in that light. Nor using intentional language. People can be assholes about a lot of things, but doing it in some sort of "I'm more pure than you" light is not something I see from like outspoken leftists and activists. Much like "check your privilege" it's mostly the realm of teens, randos, and a lot of imaginative story telling.
But also I don't understand being pissy about being called privileged, or called out for bad behavior as a group - I'm a white woman (ish) and I don't see the issues with language from black activists about white privilege or "white women's tears" or not being "invited to the cookout" or not being in the 92% or whatever being harmful, or offensive. I'm not mad about critical race theory, nor buying all the lies about it. I'm not feeling threatened by calls for black liberation.
So I don't understand assuming "toxic masculinity" is offensive to all men and that the problem is how one calls out the patriarchy instead of the rather loud current counter-narrative that the patriarchy is great actually when it's actively hurting not just women and non-binary folks but also men too. But if leftist men want to adjust their language to sway their non-leftist peers, good for them. Do that. Be the leaders in bringing those people away from the right.
Most of that labor has landed on black women specifically and women in general, and there's irony in being told how to sway men better rather than those men going out and doing that advocacy and education themselves. (There are great educators who are men out there, but statistically the education part of social justice activism labor predominantly falls on women, especially online where these conversations tend to happen.)
These days I agree. That one was so ripe for mockery that it didn't last long, but 10 - 12 years ago it was used seriously, for a bit. And personally I have a problem with just saying, simplified...
Much like "check your privilege" it's mostly the realm of teens, randos, and a lot of imaginative story telling.
These days I agree. That one was so ripe for mockery that it didn't last long, but 10 - 12 years ago it was used seriously, for a bit. And personally I have a problem with just saying, simplified and paraphrased, "you're a privileged xxxx, so your opinion on this issue has no value", which is not as common as it used to be, but is still relatively common. But that's outside of the realm of badly designed phrases, that one is literal at least.
Anyway, you're talking about whether it's reasonable that some phrases may be perceived as offensive or too generalizing, whether it's reasonable or fair that someone else is supposed to accomodate that. Those are valid questions, but that's only one point of view of the situation.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that people in this thread tend to view the situation as "leftists who bring reasonable arguments vs people who misinterpret them". This is not the reality. Most people on mainstream social media are stupid and many of them actually use "toxic masculinity" as a way to discount anything a man does. And then on the other side you have incels and other assholes, but you know that. My point is, these things get immediately coopted by shallow, angry and/or stupid people on both sides and fan the flames of the ugly polarization of western society among relatively mainstream parts of said society. It's not just redpillers, it's a big portion of youngish people in general.
And imo discussing these things is important, but we must be careful to not miss the forest for the trees: the main issue should always be "is what we're doing moving us towards our goals?". It doesn't matter if it's fair or reasonable, what matters is the results. Personally I'm not convinced by the results.
(sorry for not responding to the specifics, I'd have to spend more time on this and I think the issue lies elsewhere)
"Rhetoric that one can draw parallels to" is a particularly low bar of commentary and doesn't produce useful results, as you have kind have stumbled into by accident.
I find this quite funny because if you presented the above response to me without context, I would 100% assume it was said by a right winger criticizing the left.
"Rhetoric that one can draw parallels to" is a particularly low bar of commentary and doesn't produce useful results, as you have kind have stumbled into by accident.
I don't think this is a cheap parallel. Firstly it's literal and secondly it illustrates the issue that I have with your argumentation - you seem to be repeatedly discounting the other side's...
I don't think this is a cheap parallel. Firstly it's literal and secondly it illustrates the issue that I have with your argumentation - you seem to be repeatedly discounting the other side's issues and accusing them of the same things they accuse your side of doing, which is fine if you enjoy the red vs blue conflict, but if you don't, I think this is the wrong way.
I don't think it's a productive use of time to fight on the terms of the propagandist, and the Red vs Blue dichotomy, especially as it exists in the opposition-controlled social media sphere, is...
I don't think it's a productive use of time to fight on the terms of the propagandist, and the Red vs Blue dichotomy, especially as it exists in the opposition-controlled social media sphere, is very much a part of that.
The way you solve that is by changing the way one engages in social spaces by not automatically assuming good faith out of anonymous internet bot accounts, and by finding new means of connecting with people, not dressing up the same idea in the same places except this time everything is named differently.
I roughly agree with what you say, but that's an extremely narrow view of the situation. Assuming bad faith in arguments is a huge issue that kills any potential for a conversation and is...
I roughly agree with what you say, but that's an extremely narrow view of the situation. Assuming bad faith in arguments is a huge issue that kills any potential for a conversation and is perpetrated by the left just as much as by the right. Assuming someone who disagrees is a bot kills any chance of understanding their issues. And thinking they have no grievances that are worth empathizing with only makes the cultural conflicts stronger and more extreme.
Yes, bad faith arguments exist, bots or just terminally online people not worth arguing with exist. But those are side issues. The main issue is always "is what we're doing moving the society towards our goals?". And unless your goal is keeping the culture wars going, I don't think your approach is doing that.
I don't assume bad faith from the other side. I assume bad faith on popular social media sites like Twtiter, Facebook, and Instagram because those sites are infested with bots and trolls. And for...
I don't assume bad faith from the other side. I assume bad faith on popular social media sites like Twtiter, Facebook, and Instagram because those sites are infested with bots and trolls. And for the record, those bots and trolls show up on both sides - not because the people running them support both sides, but as a form of controlled opposition, so you can't even trust the people who agree with you
However, even if the bot problem was solved tomorrow, I feel like those forms of social media are just bad places to have serious discussions in general. There's too many eyeballs on the conversation, and I believe that it makes people feel like there's too much to loose by conceding ground.
So my "approach" is that my use of those sites is minimal, and any engagement on those sites I think through very carefully.
Well let's agree to disagree then because while scapegoating is perhaps too strong of a word, I think you're doing the thing you say is wrong - dismissing the complaints of one side (you're right:...
Well let's agree to disagree then because while scapegoating is perhaps too strong of a word, I think you're doing the thing you say is wrong - dismissing the complaints of one side (you're right: it is a lot easier to do that) while blaming the issue on something that merely correlates and is arguably less related to those complaints because it stands largely outside of the toxic masculinity etc. discourse.
"You're not complaining about the things we're saying and doing, you're complaining about capitalism!" seems like a great way to keep the conflict going indefinitely.
The more I engage with your comments in this thread, the more you have driven me to think that you're approaching a very basic and simple idea yet not stating it: maybe we are just missing a...
The more liberal of the men were all united in their judgement of the Democratic Party's platform around men.
The more I engage with your comments in this thread, the more you have driven me to think that you're approaching a very basic and simple idea yet not stating it: maybe we are just missing a political party and movement that is going to simply state everyone should be treated equally. When I look back at all the successful civil rights movements of the past 200 years, that was the terminology that ended up successfully sticking in the public consciousness.
If you polled the statement "the USian two party political system is critically broken" I bet you would recieve near universal agreement. The challenge is that no one knows how to fix it without...
If you polled the statement "the USian two party political system is critically broken" I bet you would recieve near universal agreement. The challenge is that no one knows how to fix it without substantial reforms which the same parties in power have no incentive to implement. So much like a vehicle we have no ability or funds to repair we keep driving it because we have to get to work somehow.
Alternatively, severe societal breakdown might provide an opening for an insurgent party.
The two parties both want to win elections, and will change to attract enough people to do so. I think part of the problem is that Americans want really diverse things, and when there are strong...
The two parties both want to win elections, and will change to attract enough people to do so. I think part of the problem is that Americans want really diverse things, and when there are strong feelings on five different ways to address an issue it's a) really challenging to get a majority to agree what to try and b) even if something is negotiated through, a large majority will be unhappy it wasn't their thing.
I believe a second part of the problem is it's tough to figure out the details of what voters care about. Fewer people are members of large community organizations they trust to represent them, and fewer and fewer people answer pollsters every year. The ballet box is the ultimate poll, but when voters only have two choices that "poll" really lacks granularity. I am rooting for ranked choice voting to spread. Even if it still supports two major parties (which it has done in Australia for decades), the additional information of people's second and third choice votes would give way more information to the parties so they could have hard data on what changes would make voters happier and get them more votes.
No they won't. Right now, the Dems are looking at Zohran Mamdani right now and saying "he's too socialist, we can't support him! We need to attempt more bipartisan legislation, as if they haven't...
Exemplary
The two parties both want to win elections, and will change to attract enough people to do so.
No they won't.
Right now, the Dems are looking at Zohran Mamdani right now and saying "he's too socialist, we can't support him! We need to attempt more bipartisan legislation, as if they haven't tried and been blatantly screwed on that for the last 15-ish years. They claim that Mamdani is 'too unpopular and unelectable', right after he won the primary. Won it in a landslide, in NYC which is already ~80% democrat.
There are two reasons why Dem politicians refuse to change: 1) because most centrist Dem politicians are old and they're using the playbook that worked for the Dems for most of the last 60 years (if their existing playbook has worked from 1965 through to 2005, with some successes even after that - Obama and Biden - then they're far more willing to ignore the hiccups and double down in 2025), and 2) because going 'socialist' will alienate the donors they require to successfully fund their campaign. Basically, they have two options that might work - going left or going right - and even if there's only a 30% chance that going right will work, then they'll just take that chance and bullshit to themselves that it's more likely to work anyway.
This just sounds like the party line though. They want people to believe that they adjust platforms to appeal to the broadest constituent base. But money talks and corporations and the rich have...
The two parties both want to win elections, and will change to attract enough people to do so. I think part of the problem is that Americans want really diverse things, and when there are strong feelings on five different ways to address an issue it's a) really challenging to get a majority to agree what to try and b) even if something is negotiated through, a large majority will be unhappy it wasn't their thing.
This just sounds like the party line though. They want people to believe that they adjust platforms to appeal to the broadest constituent base. But money talks and corporations and the rich have the loudest voices. That money is then fueled into ads denigrating opponents, villainizing out groups, and promising programs and policies which will never see the floor of any congressional body.
Ranked choice voting would be an excellent step in the right direction. I think it would be broadly supported until the parties turn their ardent followers against it. Because those parties are incentivized to block ranked choice as it will undermine the system I described above.
If voters are motivated to go to the polls and mark a candidate because of hating the other candidate, or approving of how their guy is going after the out group, or blindly believing some...
...money talks and corporations and the rich have the loudest voices. That money is then fueled into ads denigrating opponents, villainizing out groups, and promising programs and policies which will never see the floor of any congressional body.
If voters are motivated to go to the polls and mark a candidate because of hating the other candidate, or approving of how their guy is going after the out group, or blindly believing some obviously impossible program or policy outcome (but it's fine if it fails because "at least they tried unlike the other party that wasn't promising anything like it"), they are contributing to a winning constituent base, and their actions are part of a vicious cycle that drives parties to continue those actions.
I hate that moneyed interests can successfully tap into such self-defeating human characteristics, but these are real human characteristics voters have, and winning votes this way can be (and sadly has been for most of my adult life) the path to having a broad constituent base.
The Democratic party successfully defeated the ranked choice ballot question in Nevada, and the Republican party came very close to killing it in Alaska, but ranked choice currently has a state-wide foothold in Maine and Alaska. I am hopeful that over time the experience in those states will wear off the edge of the "unfamiliar = scary" part of the opposition, and allow it to spread.
In talking with men in my various social circles that includes Republicans, Democrats, progressive, etc there is a surprising amount of overlap in views. My view for the past 20 years has been...
In talking with men in my various social circles that includes Republicans, Democrats, progressive, etc there is a surprising amount of overlap in views.
My view for the past 20 years has been neither party is viewed in any positive way it's just matter of which party is less shitty to the individual voter.
I think a third party could do well, but would need to be started like 4 months ago.
I've held this opinion for years, and although it's changed, at it's core it's remained mostly the same: When feminists fought the good fight to liberate women of the expectations for women to do...
I've held this opinion for years, and although it's changed, at it's core it's remained mostly the same: When feminists fought the good fight to liberate women of the expectations for women to do nothing but be birthing machines at home, to not vote, to not be educated, to not wear only dresses and skirts, to not carry a pregnancy to term, this was, and still is, a hard fight. But it's a fight for more rights with a clear goal. Women were reduced to a lesser status in society and the feminist fight has always been to break out of that status.
Opposed to this are men, who as a collective are seen as better off, but are pressured just as hard into this role of a provider, like you say. But it's still a role, it's still a status. Reducing your hours after having a kid as the father is still difficult, and all too often not financially feasible at all. The feminist fight for men is one for rights which just aren't as glamorous as the ones that women fought for; to be vulnerable, to cry. To spend time with your kids. To go into careers traditionally seen as feminine. It's not a downgrade of "the man's status" in society, but it feels as such. And just like with first and second wave feminists, it's not a fight that is opposed only by the other sex, but also by plenty of our own. And it's not a fight that others will do for men.
I do find it interesting that pants have been thoroughly liberated of being for being for one sex only, and yet skirts have not. It's an indicator to me that this fight hasn't happened yet. It feels like it's not even started. And it's so much easier to reach people through social media, and at the same time, so much easier to isolate yourself with the opinions you agree with, because the algorithms feed you content that keeps you glued to the screen.
One of the ways I've thought about the trends in young men over the last couple of decades has been looking at them through the lens society does. Where women are often objectified for their...
One of the ways I've thought about the trends in young men over the last couple of decades has been looking at them through the lens society does. Where women are often objectified for their looks, and in particular being thin, men are objectified for their utility. There is even the old adage "if she doesn't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy." Men who can economically provide for a family, fix things around the house, and generally handle problems are fetishized in media.
So my thought is that while the difference between young men and women is in how they react to these social pressures and objectification, the source is similar: a strong dissonance between who they are and what their life is like, and what society and media tells them a valuable man or woman is.
Our other studies have found that men who get to be the kind of fathers they want to be report better mental health. Their partners report better mental health, and then their children report better mental health. Men who take paternity leave, whatever is offered to them, report better relationships with their kids.
I do wonder about the extent there could be bias, where men who prioritize these relationships are already primed for these positive outcomes, vs this being causal. I really couldn't say. I've always been an extremely hands on Dad, and we had fewer kids than my wife might have wanted because I wanted to have a personal relationship with all my kids and not just be a figurehead at some remove to them. So to what extent did I achieve that because I valued it at the beginning, vs something else triggering a virtuous cycle.
The metric of men who "get to be the fathers they want to be" is just a proxy for financial security, so I'm not surprised everyone is happier when Dad has options vs having to pick up two shifts.
The metric of men who "get to be the fathers they want to be" is just a proxy for financial security, so I'm not surprised everyone is happier when Dad has options vs having to pick up two shifts.
There is also the dichotomy of "has the option" vs. "feels compelled to". I know many people who live well beyond there means, and have to work long hours to feel like they can provide for their...
There is also the dichotomy of "has the option" vs. "feels compelled to". I know many people who live well beyond there means, and have to work long hours to feel like they can provide for their families. I also know many people who live within their means, and have to pick up extra work just to provide a stable home life for their family. When the media you engage with is telling you a certain high standard is needed, who is to blame when you listen?
Sorry, is that actually an adage or just the joke from the Red Green show? I have never heard anyone say it who wasn't quoting the show nor mean it seriously.
There is even the old adage "if she doesn't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy
Sorry, is that actually an adage or just the joke from the Red Green show? I have never heard anyone say it who wasn't quoting the show nor mean it seriously.
To young men, a quote from a 34 year old show that worked its way into other contexts is probably about the same thing. But yes, while the red green phrasing with the humorous slant took root, I...
To young men, a quote from a 34 year old show that worked its way into other contexts is probably about the same thing. But yes, while the red green phrasing with the humorous slant took root, I heard the sentiment and similar expressions before that show.
Huh, I was not under the impression it has taken root elsewhere either. Genuinely I don't know anyone else that watched that show as a kid and have heard it quoted once in my life by someone...
Huh, I was not under the impression it has taken root elsewhere either. Genuinely I don't know anyone else that watched that show as a kid and have heard it quoted once in my life by someone outside my family. And I'm old enough to have seen it vs say, college students who definitely don't reference it.
Here’s at least one more! Many evenings (I think Saturdays if I recall) in the mid-late 90s and early 00s were spent with my dad and sometimes my mom watching Red Green on PBS. I always wondered...
Here’s at least one more! Many evenings (I think Saturdays if I recall) in the mid-late 90s and early 00s were spent with my dad and sometimes my mom watching Red Green on PBS.
I always wondered how many Possum Vans they went through with their antics, haha.
I'd never seen/heard of the show before, but I have heard this quoted seriously by guys around my age (~30). This was usually when learning a new skill or practicing something that is a handy...
I'd never seen/heard of the show before, but I have heard this quoted seriously by guys around my age (~30). This was usually when learning a new skill or practicing something that is a handy skill around the house.
I'm also a young man who didn't realize this saying was a quote. It's been recited to me as received wisdom more than once, always from older women (aunts, grandmothers). The worst part is that...
I'm also a young man who didn't realize this saying was a quote. It's been recited to me as received wisdom more than once, always from older women (aunts, grandmothers). The worst part is that they're pretty unambiguously calling you unattractive in the process.
The needed context for the show is that the line is often used by the main character (Red) who frequently demonstrates the humorous "life hacks" he has created. It's funny to me because: His...
The needed context for the show is that the line is often used by the main character (Red) who frequently demonstrates the humorous "life hacks" he has created. It's funny to me because:
His creations are usually not very good effective anyway
I don't really think he's unattractive
If I had to guess, the people whom you heard using it had good intentions, but unfortunately without context it becomes hurtful.
A joke, you say? If that wasn't written on Moses' tablets, it should have been. I never heard it anywhere else myself, but the sentiment was pretty prevalent in my environment growing up.
A joke, you say? If that wasn't written on Moses' tablets, it should have been.
I never heard it anywhere else myself, but the sentiment was pretty prevalent in my environment growing up.
Moses you say? I grew up with a living family member who was born in the late 1800's, and in addition to a whole lot of racism, they definitely had those notions. They were from the deep south,...
Moses you say? I grew up with a living family member who was born in the late 1800's, and in addition to a whole lot of racism, they definitely had those notions. They were from the deep south, though I grew up in rural foothills in the west. Maybe it was a more common trope in rural areas in the second half of the 1900's
Does this mean I'm not allowed to use that quote anymore?
men are objectified for their utility. There is even the old adage "if she doesn't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy." Men who can economically provide for a family, fix things around the house, and generally handle problems are fetishized in media.
Does this mean I'm not allowed to use that quote anymore?
Don't let me get in the way of a fun time! I've said it plenty, just not as serious advice. I think as long as your advice to men struggling in the dating scene isn't to spend more time at Home...
Don't let me get in the way of a fun time! I've said it plenty, just not as serious advice. I think as long as your advice to men struggling in the dating scene isn't to spend more time at Home Depot, you're probably fine. I usually say it to my married friend after they've fixed something because it's a great way to throw shade.
I want to share an anecdote related to the broad issue because it's not interesting enough for its own thread, but it illustrates that sometimes there's just complete misunderstanding on the side...
I want to share an anecdote related to the broad issue because it's not interesting enough for its own thread, but it illustrates that sometimes there's just complete misunderstanding on the side of feminists talking about men's issues, and this thing just happened recently. A prominent feminist activist in my country was talking about the issues with the manosphere and incels in an interview for a feminist magazine:
"Many of my [women] friends settle for a lower standard. So it
definitely can't be said that women only go for the most successful,
handsome and rich men," Johanna polemics with a key
belief of the incel community that women are generally superficial, picky
and only want men who can make a lot of money.
She simultaneously confirms the incel point of view in just two sentences while attempting to deny it. Instead of choosing to say that men (and women) need to bring some values to the relationship, but those can be very different than the very surface levels measures of value and many women do fully appreciate those, she basically says "well, yeah, you're right that women care about superficial things, but don't worry, some woman will settle for you".
This is one example, but I see similar kinds of tonedeaf advice with some regularity, which shaped my opinions on the broader topics.
I do not think any form of "redefining masculinity" is ever going to work out the way people seem to think it is.
Dont try to analyze demographics from an objective distance, just try to empathize. Think back to when you were a teenager. Did you enjoy it when your parents would nag you and tell you all the things you are doing wrong with your life? Even if it was good advice? I never did. My brother never did. None of my peers did.
Now imagine, would you like it more if instead of your parents who feed and clothe and maybe even love you, it was some random stranger who doesnt even know you?
Young men do not want some random woman on the internet defining masculinity for them, because it is a form of control. It takes away their agency to have an outsider define their goals for them. Its like when people turn away from Christianity because they are sick of old people juding them, so they go in the opposite direction and become goth or something like that. They know you dont like it, thats part of what made it appealing in the first place.
Similarly, if youve got a culture thats focused on stuff like feminism telling young men that they need to change themselves because who they currently are is not good enough, they will run in the opposite direction. Declaring a "crisis of masculinity" because of people like Andrew Tate will backfire. It will only serve to make the man seem cooler than he already did to them.
As a new father, this entire social quandary has me really nervous about my son’s future. I want to be a good role model for him, but I fear that he’ll get swept up in the noise. With that in mind, I agree largely with your statement, because I feel like saying “xyz is bad” without providing an alternative to xyz is a recipe for failure. We ought to instead be focused on finding, and standing up, proper examples of male role models.
As a (former) teacher, I had it drilled into me that positive reinforcement is much more effective than its negative foil (taking away a good thing). Even if we don’t think folks like Andrew Tate are “good things,” to young men, if all we do is say that these people are bad examples, and try to take them away, it solves nothing. Back to the teacher lens, we were told to “catch kids being good” and praise them for that. Reinforcing the positive instead of reacting to negative. In that same vein, we should be standing up these positive models and doing our best to drive kids towards them, not away from someone else.
What I’ve seen is that being a good role model coupled with some guiding towards/away from certain media is a good recipe for success.
I actually rarely felt resentment when my parents said I shouldn’t do something. I mostly trusted their judgement (although they were definitely wrong about violent video games - I played those anyway). Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s that they weren’t ever hypocritical. There was never a “do as I say, not as I do” moment growing up.
That's a good description of my preferred approach. I'll add that as a parent of four, I also strive to allow for a safe space for failure.
First, I think children will often learn better if they're allowed to make their own choices and see the consequences. And second, I think it's important for them see that sometimes despite your best effort at something you'll still fail, and to learn how to handle that gracefully. (Note that I'd never sabotage them to teach them this! And of course I'll intervene if there's the the possibility of lasting harm or consequences.)
So metaphorically speaking, I'll allow the odd minor scraped knee now and then. But I'll be right there ready with the neosporin and a band-aid.
And since I'm fond of digging into my file of literary quotations:
That sounds really wonderful, to have trustworthy parents provide meaningful judgement
I had the opposite type of parents, and from the age of 12 I firmly believed they know nothing and I shouldn't trust their judgement on anything at all. Everything they did weren't hypocritical, but were steeped in irrational anxieties that all come down to "it just doesn't feel right".
Part of being a good role model is taking care of one's own mental health, and accepting that we live in an imperfect world.
You make some great points, and it’s worth calling out that I feel much the same about my parents. They weren’t super strict, and they weren’t perfect by any means, but we got along, and I respected their judgments, so in the rare moments where they did truly course-correct, I almost always listened to them.
I do feel like I’m doing a good job so far, and at the end of the day, I know that I will always be there for the little guy. So, I am confident he will have at least one really good male role model in his life. He also thankfully has great grandparents, uncles, etc, but I’m just trying to build myself up with a little self-love here. :)
Thanks for sharing!
Is there an example you can give of where you disagreed and trusted their judgement?
Based on that small snippet, it sounds as though you're like-minded and where you disagreed, you ignored them. One might extrapolate that had you disagreed on "role models" like and Andrew tate, you'd have ignored them?
No criticism, just curiosity (and I totally agree on violent video games).
By this I meant we may have just been lucky to have similar strong sensibilities derived from our genetics. I definitely complained and disagreed plenty as a younger child. But the values I learned were basically "don't hurt others" and "take care of your surroundings". Hard to disagree with that.
Honestly my experience was probably largely from their tolerance of my own decision making. There won’t be as much conflict if the parents never start it. Like I could have been told to clean my room more but I wasn’t and I didn’t. These days I’m reasonably cleaner than average. More tidy than my parents keep their place.
Edit: As a better supporting anecdote than cleaning my room, when I told my mom I was definitely an atheist she wasn’t upset. She asked if I felt wonder when viewing the world. I said I did so she said “you’re good”.
If you model honoring your and others emotions and needs (primarily but demonstrating them for yourself to your son, and radiating outwards to everyone else, including him), he will be far better off than everyone else people-pleasing and not understanding how to do right by themselves.
Do a rabbit hole search today looking at things like boundaries, boundary areas, core values/principles, emotional inteligence and also emotional immaturity.
Understand that when we feel reactive and intensly in response to various situations, others, places, and time etc there is often a violation or an inadequacy in terms of needs being fulfilled and boundaries existing or being properly enforced to ensure safety and equilibrium. When you feel something or someone else feels something like this, try to understand what led to that state and what it might say about their needs being met or their values being upheld that the current situation interferes with and work to develop practical boundaries that reasonably address the areas and values that are implicated
This stuff will blow your mind when you start being able to not unsee it playing out day to day in many of life's personal and others personal situations
One of the things that I hope to see in future elections is a reversal of the shift rightward by young American men. There's some reason for hope here; they appear to not hold entrenched party affiliation and instead are very issues driven. This suggests that the correct policies may entice them to switch back. I had a couple takeaways from this article and the study it references. First, men and women are extraordinarily similar in their opinions about themselves and about men in some very key topics. Second, men's issues are not inherently unsolvable. Third, men do not necessarily want women to fail, but they are struggling to grasp how to reconcile their beliefs with reality.
86% of men surveyed "chose 'provider' as the top trait they should have". That's depressing. Equally depressing is that 77% of women responded the same. Combined with a weak economy and the rise of social media comparisons, this is a recipe for disaster.
What is the answer here? I think we can approach it from both sides. Create policies that help men be more financially stable. Stop making men feel like they need to be providers-first.
Thanks, @Grzmot, as I found this through your link in "How algorithms, alpha males and tradwives are winning the war for kids’ minds".
You might be interested in this video from More Perfect Union that featured a discussion from a fairly diverse group of men about the recent rightward shift. It's got a clickbaity title, but it tackled some of the issues covered in this article as well.
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed that video a lot. I liked their ability to have a good discussion despite the differences in political leanings. Video had me engaged the whole time. I had started reading Of Boys and Men and this was a good reminder to pick that up again. Some thoughts I had:
One of the Republican voters was very careful to state that if he had to state which gender had it harder finding a job today, he would state that everyone's getting screwed but that maybe 50.01% of the hardship goes to men. That speaks to a desire to be aware that women have hardships too.
The more liberal of the men were all united in their judgement of the Democratic Party's platform around men. The least critical they got was in the vein of "Democrats are wrong for ____, but Republicans are so much worse". I mean, good on them for recognizing that for sure, but there's something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party if a large chunk of their voters are only voting because the other party is more evil.
The phrase toxic masculinity has clearly outgrown its original use of the phrase and may be doing more harm than good now. Rather than using it to describe a phenomenon for study, it seems that it's being used to attack (as perceived by these men), which is counterproductive if trying to solve it. As Reeves says, you're not going to convince many people to change their behavior if you are telling them that they have a personal failing. i.e. Tell people how to be good rather than telling them that they are bad.
There's way, way more similarities than differences.
Thanks again, @AnthonyB. I can feel I'll be thinking about this for a while.
I mean I'm glad people are realizing it, but this happened about 3 days after it started to be widely used in the media and online discourse. And optimistically at the latest when the most famous corporate use happened and was mocked, which was the beginning of 2019.
And I'm not saying that toxic masculinity doesn't exist or anything of the sort, but terms like "toxic masculinity" or the phrase "check your privilege", no matter their original purpose, feel like they're tailor made to be immediately hijacked by angry or shallow people on both fringes and used primarily to polarize society.
I used to agree, but then I saw the right demonize, muddy the waters and redefine "woke" in real time.
At this point, I feel like trying to blame terminology is a red herring, trying to attach a rational reason for backlash to a concept that would've been demonized no matter what it was called.
Two counterpoints to this. First is that the reaction doesn't need to be rational to be relevant. We should care about the influence on society of this kind of discourse that often uses things like toxic masculinity as more of a purity test than anything. Imo it's very possible that despite good intentions the net result on society has been negative, which would be stupid, but if it's real then it doesn't make sense to continue.
Second is a bit of a devil's advocate, but it's genuine. Look at it from the perspective of someone who's really annoyed by this discourse. It's been happening for at least a decade now and throughout all that time he's been told he should shut up because he's privileged and a part of the problem. This surely is not what the people who came up with the term toxic masculinity meant to say, but unfortunately is something that's still often being said in the dumber social media circles as a response to any disagreement.
In that situation of course you get more angry and more dismissive over time. And I think I really should emphasize: this has been happening for over a decade. I'm not excusing the result, but a slightly assholish interpretation of what you say would be "we did the thing that antagonizes a nontrivial group of the population for ten years straight and now the group is so radical that we can write them off as evil and a lost cause". Whatever the real cause of the issue is (and I don't think this is the major part), that approach doesn't make it better.
Correlation is not causality.
People are not becoming radicalized because they were treated dismissively by the opposition. People are becoming radicalized because capitalism is falling apart at the seams and the vast majority of people in our country have been having a really rough go of things in the past few decades.
It's a lot easier to spread a message that scapegoats an outgroup by making a mountain out of a series of microaggressions than one that redirects that rage at the sorts of people who are responsible for our current circumstances.
Of course the ultimate source of these trends is material, but boiling it down so much really isn't explanatory in this conversation. It erases the clear cultural divisions and does not predict the specific orientation of reaction. This reasoning also implies that every person who's voiced criticism of the meme is doing so in bad faith or was misled for conspiratorial purposes.
In some sense the specifically antifeminist backlash is being generated by propaganda taking advantage of hardships, but when the vast majority of men have no real motivation to engage with the bases of sociological theories and many of those men make explicit their mistaken impressions of feminist language, refusing to reorient language on the fly in the face of those propagandists is saying that you're done fighting. It sucks having words twisted, and there's no perfect phrasing, but the inevitable disjunction between theories of demographic analysis and practical communication is not handwavable, not when the problematic demographic in practice is voting against things theirselves proclaim to believe.
When someone's only idea of feminist concepts is filtered through the lens of the propagandist, there is no winning move.
Conceding to them their ability to direct the narrative through policing use of language seems like something that is tailor-made to cause confusion and waste time, while gaining very little in return - as they can simply repeat the same process with the new language.
If there's any further fighting to be done, it's certainly not on the propagandist's terms.
My issue is your disregard of the obscurity as simply the propagandists' narrative. Most people were not introduced to it through coherent framing, and plenty of people who knew the precise definition happily threw it around as a signifier of masculine individuals doing wrong, regardless of the context's connection to the perverse expectations of manhood.
But also, too bad? They're gonna keep lying. Refusing to adapt is just pride. They're words. "Toxic masculinity" is not so precise a concept as to require technical grounding.
Edit: Apologies if this seemed curt, but your response really disregarded everything I wrote and just parroted the standard cliche response. That has been the logic of progressive messaging for 10-15 years, and it is not working, so forgive me for being skeptical about staying the course.
I see the problem differently. Progressive messaging has had issues for the past 10-15 years, but to me, the problem is not based on language, but giving opposition-controlled social spaces too much grace and being too eager to assume good faith where there is none to be found.
Putting a new wrapper on the same underlying idea isn't going to work if it's communicated in the same way through the same flawed sites. Instead it's just setting someone up to have a gigantic "SUCKER" stamped on their forehead, leaving them with the distinct feeling that they wasted a lot of time and energy to accomplish nothing.
When the deck is stacked against you, you're not going to win hearts and minds by going high when your opposition goes low. You either change how you communicate in a way that is unaccounted for, or you pick a different battleground, one where you can actually connect with real human beings and know that you're changing lives. De-radicalization is a tough job, and I'm thankful for the men in my life who were willing to listen.
Don't worry about it even a little bit, you're fine. :)
My experience would tell me that the attitude of assuming bad faith in such spaces has backfired and spilled into the wider culture. Instead, feminists of any gender seem to have given up on meaningfully communicating with men steeped in patriarchy who aren't dedicated to learning.
That could all be selection bias, of course. But I don't think it's "going high" to rephrase things, just kind of the bare minimum. Social media may be biased and inculcate rage, that doesn't mean that billions of people don't treat it as otherwise.
If you're observing the feminists you're already aware of over time, you might merely be witnessing burnout.
I find this quite funny because if you presented the above response to me without context, I would 100% assume it was said by a right winger criticizing the left. I've seen similar rhetoric many times. And considering that the left really does use language policing as a tool to try to change society but also seemingly more often as a purity test*, I don't think they all were necessarily right wing extremists.
* see unhoused vs homeless, CSAM vs child porn, pushing back on some slurs like retarded etc.
None of those are purity tests?
Perhaps that's not the right word (non-native speaker), but I have seen all three used as signals that one is a part of "the right group" or assumptions being made about bad intentions of the other party based on them using the old terms or actively refusing the new ones.
I just don't see "pushing back on slurs" in that light. Nor using intentional language. People can be assholes about a lot of things, but doing it in some sort of "I'm more pure than you" light is not something I see from like outspoken leftists and activists. Much like "check your privilege" it's mostly the realm of teens, randos, and a lot of imaginative story telling.
But also I don't understand being pissy about being called privileged, or called out for bad behavior as a group - I'm a white woman (ish) and I don't see the issues with language from black activists about white privilege or "white women's tears" or not being "invited to the cookout" or not being in the 92% or whatever being harmful, or offensive. I'm not mad about critical race theory, nor buying all the lies about it. I'm not feeling threatened by calls for black liberation.
So I don't understand assuming "toxic masculinity" is offensive to all men and that the problem is how one calls out the patriarchy instead of the rather loud current counter-narrative that the patriarchy is great actually when it's actively hurting not just women and non-binary folks but also men too. But if leftist men want to adjust their language to sway their non-leftist peers, good for them. Do that. Be the leaders in bringing those people away from the right.
Most of that labor has landed on black women specifically and women in general, and there's irony in being told how to sway men better rather than those men going out and doing that advocacy and education themselves. (There are great educators who are men out there, but statistically the education part of social justice activism labor predominantly falls on women, especially online where these conversations tend to happen.)
These days I agree. That one was so ripe for mockery that it didn't last long, but 10 - 12 years ago it was used seriously, for a bit. And personally I have a problem with just saying, simplified and paraphrased, "you're a privileged xxxx, so your opinion on this issue has no value", which is not as common as it used to be, but is still relatively common. But that's outside of the realm of badly designed phrases, that one is literal at least.
Anyway, you're talking about whether it's reasonable that some phrases may be perceived as offensive or too generalizing, whether it's reasonable or fair that someone else is supposed to accomodate that. Those are valid questions, but that's only one point of view of the situation.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that people in this thread tend to view the situation as "leftists who bring reasonable arguments vs people who misinterpret them". This is not the reality. Most people on mainstream social media are stupid and many of them actually use "toxic masculinity" as a way to discount anything a man does. And then on the other side you have incels and other assholes, but you know that. My point is, these things get immediately coopted by shallow, angry and/or stupid people on both sides and fan the flames of the ugly polarization of western society among relatively mainstream parts of said society. It's not just redpillers, it's a big portion of youngish people in general.
And imo discussing these things is important, but we must be careful to not miss the forest for the trees: the main issue should always be "is what we're doing moving us towards our goals?". It doesn't matter if it's fair or reasonable, what matters is the results. Personally I'm not convinced by the results.
(sorry for not responding to the specifics, I'd have to spend more time on this and I think the issue lies elsewhere)
"Rhetoric that one can draw parallels to" is a particularly low bar of commentary and doesn't produce useful results, as you have kind have stumbled into by accident.
I don't think this is a cheap parallel. Firstly it's literal and secondly it illustrates the issue that I have with your argumentation - you seem to be repeatedly discounting the other side's issues and accusing them of the same things they accuse your side of doing, which is fine if you enjoy the red vs blue conflict, but if you don't, I think this is the wrong way.
I don't think it's a productive use of time to fight on the terms of the propagandist, and the Red vs Blue dichotomy, especially as it exists in the opposition-controlled social media sphere, is very much a part of that.
The way you solve that is by changing the way one engages in social spaces by not automatically assuming good faith out of anonymous internet bot accounts, and by finding new means of connecting with people, not dressing up the same idea in the same places except this time everything is named differently.
I roughly agree with what you say, but that's an extremely narrow view of the situation. Assuming bad faith in arguments is a huge issue that kills any potential for a conversation and is perpetrated by the left just as much as by the right. Assuming someone who disagrees is a bot kills any chance of understanding their issues. And thinking they have no grievances that are worth empathizing with only makes the cultural conflicts stronger and more extreme.
Yes, bad faith arguments exist, bots or just terminally online people not worth arguing with exist. But those are side issues. The main issue is always "is what we're doing moving the society towards our goals?". And unless your goal is keeping the culture wars going, I don't think your approach is doing that.
I don't assume bad faith from the other side. I assume bad faith on popular social media sites like Twtiter, Facebook, and Instagram because those sites are infested with bots and trolls. And for the record, those bots and trolls show up on both sides - not because the people running them support both sides, but as a form of controlled opposition, so you can't even trust the people who agree with you
However, even if the bot problem was solved tomorrow, I feel like those forms of social media are just bad places to have serious discussions in general. There's too many eyeballs on the conversation, and I believe that it makes people feel like there's too much to loose by conceding ground.
So my "approach" is that my use of those sites is minimal, and any engagement on those sites I think through very carefully.
Well I'm glad that in the end we found something we can agree on without exceptions :)
Well let's agree to disagree then because while scapegoating is perhaps too strong of a word, I think you're doing the thing you say is wrong - dismissing the complaints of one side (you're right: it is a lot easier to do that) while blaming the issue on something that merely correlates and is arguably less related to those complaints because it stands largely outside of the toxic masculinity etc. discourse.
"You're not complaining about the things we're saying and doing, you're complaining about capitalism!" seems like a great way to keep the conflict going indefinitely.
The more I engage with your comments in this thread, the more you have driven me to think that you're approaching a very basic and simple idea yet not stating it: maybe we are just missing a political party and movement that is going to simply state everyone should be treated equally. When I look back at all the successful civil rights movements of the past 200 years, that was the terminology that ended up successfully sticking in the public consciousness.
If you polled the statement "the USian two party political system is critically broken" I bet you would recieve near universal agreement. The challenge is that no one knows how to fix it without substantial reforms which the same parties in power have no incentive to implement. So much like a vehicle we have no ability or funds to repair we keep driving it because we have to get to work somehow.
Alternatively, severe societal breakdown might provide an opening for an insurgent party.
The two parties both want to win elections, and will change to attract enough people to do so. I think part of the problem is that Americans want really diverse things, and when there are strong feelings on five different ways to address an issue it's a) really challenging to get a majority to agree what to try and b) even if something is negotiated through, a large majority will be unhappy it wasn't their thing.
I believe a second part of the problem is it's tough to figure out the details of what voters care about. Fewer people are members of large community organizations they trust to represent them, and fewer and fewer people answer pollsters every year. The ballet box is the ultimate poll, but when voters only have two choices that "poll" really lacks granularity. I am rooting for ranked choice voting to spread. Even if it still supports two major parties (which it has done in Australia for decades), the additional information of people's second and third choice votes would give way more information to the parties so they could have hard data on what changes would make voters happier and get them more votes.
No they won't.
Right now, the Dems are looking at Zohran Mamdani right now and saying "he's too socialist, we can't support him! We need to attempt more bipartisan legislation, as if they haven't tried and been blatantly screwed on that for the last 15-ish years. They claim that Mamdani is 'too unpopular and unelectable', right after he won the primary. Won it in a landslide, in NYC which is already ~80% democrat.
There are two reasons why Dem politicians refuse to change: 1) because most centrist Dem politicians are old and they're using the playbook that worked for the Dems for most of the last 60 years (if their existing playbook has worked from 1965 through to 2005, with some successes even after that - Obama and Biden - then they're far more willing to ignore the hiccups and double down in 2025), and 2) because going 'socialist' will alienate the donors they require to successfully fund their campaign. Basically, they have two options that might work - going left or going right - and even if there's only a 30% chance that going right will work, then they'll just take that chance and bullshit to themselves that it's more likely to work anyway.
This just sounds like the party line though. They want people to believe that they adjust platforms to appeal to the broadest constituent base. But money talks and corporations and the rich have the loudest voices. That money is then fueled into ads denigrating opponents, villainizing out groups, and promising programs and policies which will never see the floor of any congressional body.
Ranked choice voting would be an excellent step in the right direction. I think it would be broadly supported until the parties turn their ardent followers against it. Because those parties are incentivized to block ranked choice as it will undermine the system I described above.
If voters are motivated to go to the polls and mark a candidate because of hating the other candidate, or approving of how their guy is going after the out group, or blindly believing some obviously impossible program or policy outcome (but it's fine if it fails because "at least they tried unlike the other party that wasn't promising anything like it"), they are contributing to a winning constituent base, and their actions are part of a vicious cycle that drives parties to continue those actions.
I hate that moneyed interests can successfully tap into such self-defeating human characteristics, but these are real human characteristics voters have, and winning votes this way can be (and sadly has been for most of my adult life) the path to having a broad constituent base.
The Democratic party successfully defeated the ranked choice ballot question in Nevada, and the Republican party came very close to killing it in Alaska, but ranked choice currently has a state-wide foothold in Maine and Alaska. I am hopeful that over time the experience in those states will wear off the edge of the "unfamiliar = scary" part of the opposition, and allow it to spread.
In talking with men in my various social circles that includes Republicans, Democrats, progressive, etc there is a surprising amount of overlap in views.
My view for the past 20 years has been neither party is viewed in any positive way it's just matter of which party is less shitty to the individual voter.
I think a third party could do well, but would need to be started like 4 months ago.
I've held this opinion for years, and although it's changed, at it's core it's remained mostly the same: When feminists fought the good fight to liberate women of the expectations for women to do nothing but be birthing machines at home, to not vote, to not be educated, to not wear only dresses and skirts, to not carry a pregnancy to term, this was, and still is, a hard fight. But it's a fight for more rights with a clear goal. Women were reduced to a lesser status in society and the feminist fight has always been to break out of that status.
Opposed to this are men, who as a collective are seen as better off, but are pressured just as hard into this role of a provider, like you say. But it's still a role, it's still a status. Reducing your hours after having a kid as the father is still difficult, and all too often not financially feasible at all. The feminist fight for men is one for rights which just aren't as glamorous as the ones that women fought for; to be vulnerable, to cry. To spend time with your kids. To go into careers traditionally seen as feminine. It's not a downgrade of "the man's status" in society, but it feels as such. And just like with first and second wave feminists, it's not a fight that is opposed only by the other sex, but also by plenty of our own. And it's not a fight that others will do for men.
I do find it interesting that pants have been thoroughly liberated of being for being for one sex only, and yet skirts have not. It's an indicator to me that this fight hasn't happened yet. It feels like it's not even started. And it's so much easier to reach people through social media, and at the same time, so much easier to isolate yourself with the opinions you agree with, because the algorithms feed you content that keeps you glued to the screen.
Edit: also thanks for mentioning me :)
One of the ways I've thought about the trends in young men over the last couple of decades has been looking at them through the lens society does. Where women are often objectified for their looks, and in particular being thin, men are objectified for their utility. There is even the old adage "if she doesn't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy." Men who can economically provide for a family, fix things around the house, and generally handle problems are fetishized in media.
So my thought is that while the difference between young men and women is in how they react to these social pressures and objectification, the source is similar: a strong dissonance between who they are and what their life is like, and what society and media tells them a valuable man or woman is.
I do wonder about the extent there could be bias, where men who prioritize these relationships are already primed for these positive outcomes, vs this being causal. I really couldn't say. I've always been an extremely hands on Dad, and we had fewer kids than my wife might have wanted because I wanted to have a personal relationship with all my kids and not just be a figurehead at some remove to them. So to what extent did I achieve that because I valued it at the beginning, vs something else triggering a virtuous cycle.
The metric of men who "get to be the fathers they want to be" is just a proxy for financial security, so I'm not surprised everyone is happier when Dad has options vs having to pick up two shifts.
That's true as well; it measures the confluence of interest and economic ability.
There is also the dichotomy of "has the option" vs. "feels compelled to". I know many people who live well beyond there means, and have to work long hours to feel like they can provide for their families. I also know many people who live within their means, and have to pick up extra work just to provide a stable home life for their family. When the media you engage with is telling you a certain high standard is needed, who is to blame when you listen?
Sorry, is that actually an adage or just the joke from the Red Green show? I have never heard anyone say it who wasn't quoting the show nor mean it seriously.
To young men, a quote from a 34 year old show that worked its way into other contexts is probably about the same thing. But yes, while the red green phrasing with the humorous slant took root, I heard the sentiment and similar expressions before that show.
Huh, I was not under the impression it has taken root elsewhere either. Genuinely I don't know anyone else that watched that show as a kid and have heard it quoted once in my life by someone outside my family. And I'm old enough to have seen it vs say, college students who definitely don't reference it.
Thanks
Well now you know at least one more. His creative modifications to the K-car sparked something in my young pre-engineer brain. :D
Here’s at least one more! Many evenings (I think Saturdays if I recall) in the mid-late 90s and early 00s were spent with my dad and sometimes my mom watching Red Green on PBS.
I always wondered how many Possum Vans they went through with their antics, haha.
I also watched Red Green! He gave me my affinity for duct tape.
I'd never seen/heard of the show before, but I have heard this quoted seriously by guys around my age (~30). This was usually when learning a new skill or practicing something that is a handy skill around the house.
I'm also a young man who didn't realize this saying was a quote. It's been recited to me as received wisdom more than once, always from older women (aunts, grandmothers). The worst part is that they're pretty unambiguously calling you unattractive in the process.
The needed context for the show is that the line is often used by the main character (Red) who frequently demonstrates the humorous "life hacks" he has created. It's funny to me because:
goodeffective anywayIf I had to guess, the people whom you heard using it had good intentions, but unfortunately without context it becomes hurtful.
A joke, you say? If that wasn't written on Moses' tablets, it should have been.
I never heard it anywhere else myself, but the sentiment was pretty prevalent in my environment growing up.
Moses you say? I grew up with a living family member who was born in the late 1800's, and in addition to a whole lot of racism, they definitely had those notions. They were from the deep south, though I grew up in rural foothills in the west. Maybe it was a more common trope in rural areas in the second half of the 1900's
Does this mean I'm not allowed to use that quote anymore?
Don't let me get in the way of a fun time! I've said it plenty, just not as serious advice. I think as long as your advice to men struggling in the dating scene isn't to spend more time at Home Depot, you're probably fine. I usually say it to my married friend after they've fixed something because it's a great way to throw shade.
I want to share an anecdote related to the broad issue because it's not interesting enough for its own thread, but it illustrates that sometimes there's just complete misunderstanding on the side of feminists talking about men's issues, and this thing just happened recently. A prominent feminist activist in my country was talking about the issues with the manosphere and incels in an interview for a feminist magazine:
She simultaneously confirms the incel point of view in just two sentences while attempting to deny it. Instead of choosing to say that men (and women) need to bring some values to the relationship, but those can be very different than the very surface levels measures of value and many women do fully appreciate those, she basically says "well, yeah, you're right that women care about superficial things, but don't worry, some woman will settle for you".
This is one example, but I see similar kinds of tonedeaf advice with some regularity, which shaped my opinions on the broader topics.